


Mutating the Labyrinth

by Cinaed



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Brother-Sister Relationships, Female Friendship, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:43:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say when the last of the great Earth-born architects built the Labyrinth, he built it so that none could escape. Ariadne knows this to be a lie. She travels its twists and turns with her brother every night and returns to her bedchambers every dawn. </p><p>That is, she does until Theseus arrives with the third set of tributes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutating the Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annakovsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/gifts).



> Thanks go out to Ann for reading this over for me, and to ailelie for hand-holding.

“You cannot remove these woodland quests, only mutate the labyrinth.”

\--“What the Woods Mean” by Nin Harris

 

* * *

 

_I was born in the shadow of the Labyrinth a week after Daedalus finished its construction. My first memories, fragmented like broken glass, are of its imposing walls. I remember that the dark marble seemed to swallow the light around it. Even when I was in my father’s house and away from the Labyrinth I could still feel the hum of its electric boundaries in my bones._

_They say that when Daedalus, last of the great Earth-born architects, built the Labyrinth, he built it so none could escape. I know this to be a lie, for did I not travel its twist and turns with my half-brother every night and return to my bedchambers every dawn?_

_My brother had many names. Our enemies the Athenians called him Minotaurus the monster. My father called him a tool to be used. My mother is long dead, but when she lived, she called him her punishment._

_I, along with my other brothers and sisters, called him Asterion._

-Fragment 1 recovered from the memory banks of the spacecraft _Semele_

* * *

 

When I am eight, the second set of tributes arrives on Crete. After a night of feasting, Father sends the fourteen tributes into the maze.

For a week, the Labyrinth is silent. Xenodice crawls into bed with me at night. Curled up against my side, she whispers that maybe this time Father won’t have his way. Maybe this time Asterion won’t hurt anyone. Maybe this time our brother will befriend the tributes rather than devour them.

On the seventh night, the screams begin. Xenodice buries her face in my neck and weeps. My bed shakes with her sobs for hours until she finally cries herself to sleep.

The screams stop shortly after midnight.

I untangle myself from Xenodice’s grasp and creep out my window to seek Asterion.

I use the special ball of string Icarus gave me to make my way through the maze. The thread is made of daedalusium and impossible to cut. Icarus had pressed it upon me shortly before he and his father had fled-- a final gift from a brother in spirit if not in blood, for he alone knew how often I climbed onto the outermost walls of the Labyrinth to speak with Asterion.

At first I can only hear the sound of my own unsteady breathing as I turn first one corner, then another, growing steadily close to the center of the maze, but gradually I make out a quiet sobbing sound. The sobs morph into a keening wail as I draw closer, a howl that makes the ground tremble beneath my feet.

I head towards the sound of my brother weeping.

When I reach him, the full moons hide nothing. It reveals the gore matting his mane and coating his horns, exposes all the bloodied remains and pieces of bones scattered upon the ground.

I breathe through my mouth, trying not to smell anything, and keep my gaze focused on Asterion’s face which is twisted with a half-dozen emotions. I am glad that I haven’t brought Xenodice along. She would have started crying and made things worse.

He turns and sees me.

His ears droop, his broad shoulders slumping as his expression settles upon despair. “I wanted them to be my friends,” he says mournfully. The moonlight glints off of his bloodied fists as he clenches them. He stares down at the bones scattered at his feet. Bitter resentment colors his voice. “They wouldn’t be my friends, Ariadne. I warned them that if they weren’t my friends, they were my meals, but they didn’t _listen--_ ”

I interrupt. “Xenodice says that you might make friends if you didn’t eat the ones who say no,” I tell him. “And that next time you should let me help the tributes escape. You know the rules Father--”

I stop as Asterion’s ears flatten against his head and his eyes glow red. “ _Enough_ , Ariadne,” he snarls, fur bristling. Then he stops. Slowly his fur resettles against his hide. “Xenodice doesn’t understand,” he says. The words rumble in his chest, come out as a warning growl that silences the words that rush to my lips. “None of them liked me. They were cruel. They called me a monster.” His voice cracks on the final word.

I step carefully over the bones until he is at last within arm’s reach. It takes a moment to find a spot on his shoulder that isn’t covered in blood, but finally I spot an unblemished spot. I place my hand there, stroking the thick curls.

Slowly his shoulders lose their tension. “I wanted friends,” he whispers, back to being mournful.  

“ _I_ am your friend,” I say. “Xenodice is your friend.”

“You’re my sisters,” Asterion counters.

I wrinkle my nose at that, and immediately regret the gesture. The air is foul, stinking of death and blood and other terrible things that I don’t want to think about. My stomach roils, and it takes a second for me to get it under control.

“Can’t we be both?” I say at last.

He huffs out a sound that could be laughter or maybe another frustrated growl. His shoulder twitches against my hand as he lets out a slow breath.

“I am going to bathe,” he says. He turns towards me, strokes my hair back from my face and smiles. It’s a tender gesture; I ignore the blood now coating my hair, the foulness of his breath as he murmurs, “Goodnight, Ariadne.”

“Goodnight, Asterion,” I say.

When I crawl back into bed, the ball of daedalusium string safely hidden away, Xenodice stirs.

“Is he--?” She trails off, her breath catching in her throat in another hiccupping sob.

I don’t answer immediately, choosing my words carefully.

Of our siblings, Xenodice and Glaucus are closest in age to Asterion. They played with him until Asterion began to grow and grow, until his moods turned unpredictable and Father shut him away in the Labyrinth.

“He is sad,” I say. I frown into the darkness of my bedchambers, remembering his flattened ears and his expression of despair, the way his voice broke at the word monster. “He needs to leave the Labyrinth. He needs to leave Crete.”

“Father will never allow that,” Xenodice whispers. Unsaid was that Father would never let any of us leave, not after Androgeus’s death on Athens, but the words thickened the air between us.

“We must figure out a way,” I say.

“Oh, Ariadne,” Xenodice sighs, and pulls me back into her arms. She kisses my forehead with cool lips, wrinkles her nose at the streak of blood in my hair but doesn’t comment. She says nothing more, and I know she doesn’t believe we can do it.

I stare into the darkness, towards the window. If I raise my head a little, I’ll be able to see the Labyrinth’s walls. Next to me, Xenodice’s breathing slowly evens out and turns to quiet snoring.

“I will get him out of the Labyrinth,” I vow with a child’s conviction, the promise breathed into my sleeping sister’s hair. “Asterion will be free.”

 

* * *

 

“Do we have to be here?” Phaedra whispers to me as the third set of tributes file into Father’s banquet hall. She smoothes the front of her dress before she steps closer to me. We are all arranged around our father’s throne, as much on display as the tributes themselves. Phaedra’s gaze darts briefly to the tributes, then away. “I don’t want to see their faces, not when I know Asterion is going eat them.”

“Asterion won’t hurt them,” I hiss back in rebuke. I resist the urge to pinch her for good measure.

Phaedra’s face reddens with shame.

I am glad that Glaucus and Xenodice are standing on the other side of our father and can’t hear Phaedra’s thoughtless words. _Even if she is probably right_ , a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispers. Asterion’s gentleness has increasingly given way to temper more often than not as his years in the maze have stretched on. “Besides, you know as well as I that we have to be here.”

“Yes,” Phaedra sighs. Her voice wobbles dangerously. At thirteen, she has not learned how to hide her emotions as well as the rest of us. Tears glimmer unshed in her eyes as she whispers fiercely, “But I _hate_ it.”

The ambassador from Athens looks even more miserable than I remember from the last sacrifice; his voice shakes a little as he begins to introduce the tributes.

“Periboea, daughter of Alcathous and Pyrgo,” he announces.

My gaze is drawn to the girl who steps forward.

She is striking. All of the tributes are beautiful, of course, healthy and hale as part of the agreement of the Athenian reparations, but Periboea has such a glow around her that I wonder if she’s been genetically altered as well. Perhaps geneticists succeeded with her where they failed with Asterion. Maybe they have finally weeded out the mental instability and various deformities that has always accompanied genetic manipulation in the past.

Periboea bows, the sleek black wave of her hair hiding her expression as she murmurs, “Governor Minos.”

“Periboea,” Father says slowly.

There is something in his tone that makes my mouth go dry and Catreus look sharply at him. Our father leans forwards, his pale gaze intent on Periboea’s downturned head.

“Come closer,” he demands.

She looks up. I am close enough to see the incomprehension in her large dark eyes, the way her mouth has fallen open a little in a silent question. Her skin, so black that it seems almost blue in certain light, is too dark to reveal a blush, but I am certain her face is flushed.

“Governor Minos,” the ambassador objects weakly, but one harsh stare from Father silences him.

“Come here,” Father says and gestures for her to stand in front of him.

Periboea approaches unwillingly, wariness and reluctance in every slow step she takes. When she moves within reach, she grits her teeth and endures it as Father reaches out and strokes her hair.

“Such a waste,” he says softly, though the words carry.

“Governor,” snaps one of the male tributes. Everyone’s gaze shifts to him as he strides forward, chin up, shoulders straight, mouth set in a stubborn, furious line. He ignores the guards’ weapons directed at him, focuses instead on Father. His words are fierce and unyielding. “Leave her alone.”

Father looks more amused than anything else at the boy’s defiance. He glances at the ambassador, whose expression is gray and despairing. “And who is this?”

“Governor Minos,” says the ambassador, “may I present Theseus, son of Governor Aegeus of Athens.”

The room is deathly silent. Next to me, Phaedra’s eyes are as wide as saucers, her hands clapped to her mouth.

Father throws back his head and laughs.

I stare at Theseus. He is like something out of the stories Mother used to tell, a comely youth with pale flaxen hair and intelligent blue eyes. He looks every inch a hero as he glares at my father, defiant and unafraid.

I drink in the sight of Theseus, seek to memorize all his visible assets and imperfections. His nose is slightly crooked from an old injury. His left canine is chipped as he bares his teeth and continues to glower at Father. Otherwise, his lean, muscular form is perfect.  

I hide a smile behind my goblet. For the first time in years, I believe I can fulfill my vow.

 

* * *

 

As a final act of cruelty, Father forces the tributes to eat their last meal alongside us in a terrible mockery of a feast. When I was eight, I hated it, kept my gaze fixed upon my food and spoke to no one the entirety of the banquet.  

I am grateful for it this year. I situate myself next to Theseus and position Phaedra on his other side as a buffer. Father is distracted by poor Periboea, whose beautiful features seem carved of stone and who eats little. At least Catreus sits on her other side, to keep Father from doing anything too terrible.

“That was well done,” I say to Theseus.

He stares at me without recognition for a minute. Then something flickers behind his eyes and his jaw sets. “Someone had to speak. What else would he have done if I’d not told him to stop?”

Phaedra, whose face is flushed and whose eyes keep darting towards Theseus and then away, almost drops her spoon when he speaks. “Catreus would have stopped him, I think,” she whispers. Her face turns even redder when Theseus glances in her direction.

Silent, I watch Theseus as he grimly eats his meal and waves off the offers of alcohol by the serving robots.

A few minutes later, when Phaedra is distracted by something Glaucus says, I seize my chance and lean into Theseus’s space. He smells both typical and foreign, stale sweat and something unfamiliar filling my senses as I whisper into his ear.

“What would you say if I told you I knew a way out of the maze, and that together we could save your people?”

“I would say I am not certain that I believe you,” Theseus says, words curt.

I nod, unsurprised. I did not expect him to trust me immediately. “I would expect something in return, of course,” I say.

Interest begins to edge out the mistrust on his face. “Of course. And what would you want?”

I keep my steady gaze fixed upon his. “I want you to take me and Asterion with you to Athens.”

Theseus’s expression goes blank. “Asterion?”

“You call him the Minotaur.”  

“You want--” Heads turn. Theseus lowers his voice with obvious effort. “You want me to bring the _monster_ on board my ship?”

I do not allow myself to frown. “He is my brother. And it is his imprisonment that drove him to his previous actions. If he were free, I swear to you that he would harm no one,” I say, putting all my conviction into the words.

Theseus does not look entirely swayed, but at least he is still listening.

I press my case. “I have a ball of wire made of daedalusium. I will give it to you if you swear to take us with you. You can use it to make your way through the maze and find your way out again. My father will have to let you go.”

Theseus is silent for most of the meal, his expression unreadable. My throat is tight. My heart pounds so loudly in my ears that I wonder that he and Phaedra do not hear it. I pick at my food, appetite gone, as he considers my offer.

At last he nods at me and whispers, “Bring me the daedalusium string before I enter the maze, and I promise I will take you to Athens with me.”

“Done,” I say immediately. It takes everything within me not to slump in relief. I lift my drink to my lips, take a long swallow instead, and ignore the way my hand wants to tremble.  

“Will you tell me of Athens?” Phaedra asks him timidly, and I only half-listen as Theseus answers her.

 

* * *

 

I smuggle the ball of thread to Theseus just before dawn.

I pace alone in my quarters in the ensuing hours after the tributes march into the Labyrinth. I know that several of my siblings are doing the same in their bedchambers, but that is little comfort. I walk until my leg muscles burn and I am dizzy from the constant back and forth across my room.

A great cry reaches my ears mid-afternoon, the word that the tributes are making their way to one of the exits spreading like wildfire.

My breath catches in my throat. “Thank you,” I whisper as loud cheers spread through the palace. Most in the palace had mourned Androgeus, but very few had approved of the punishment Minos had given the Athenians. Still fewer ever understood Asterion and cared for him. I can hear cries of joy and relief ringing through the halls.

My father rages, but there is nothing to be done.

Theseus emerges with his bloodstained fist held up in victory. I cannot breathe for a moment, although I know the blood is fake, that Asterion is hidden away and simply waiting for the right moment to steal upon the Athenian ship.

The other tributes straggle out after Theseus, wearing varying expressions of relief and strain as Theseus announces, “I have defeated your monster, governor! We leave tonight…after our farewell feast.”

The feast passes in a blur. Theseus is seated at Father’s right hand, the better for my father to glare at him. Phaedra sits next to me once more, swinging between excitedly babbling about Theseus’s prowess and bursting into sudden tears for Asterion.

My other siblings sit silent and stone-faced throughout the meal. I yearn to take them all aside and tell them the truth, especially Xenodice and Glaucus, who both drink far too much wine and stare in mute, despairing incomprehension at anyone who tries to speak to them.

Periboea pauses by my chair, leans against it as she adjusts a strap on her boot. “We leave at twenty-one hundred,” she whispers. “Pack lightly.”

“Understood,” I whisper back. I bite down on the edges of a smile that wants to form, hard enough that I taste blood in my mouth and have to wash away the taste with my wine.

Phaedra takes hold of my free hand, clasps it so tightly that I can feel the bones grind together. “It will be okay, Ariadne,” she says with tears in her eyes.

She’s mistaken my bitten back smile for a bitten back expression of grief, I realize. I look at her pale, solemn eyes, too old in her young face, and give in to the impulse to kiss her forehead.

“It will be okay,” she whispers again, and doesn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

The Athenian ship is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It is large and elegant, the white-gold shielding catching the moonlight and making it seem like a mirage that will disappear if I touch it. As I study it, the captain begins to warm up the engines. To my surprise, the engine fires glow black instead of the usual white or blue. I squint at them in bewilderment.

“My father made me promise that if I was victorious, the ambassador would change the engine fires to white. If I failed, he would keep them black,” Theseus explains.

I jump, having been too absorbed in my examination to hear him approach. “Can’t you just announce your survival?” I ask, curious.

Theseus shrugs. “Since the war, the atmosphere makes communication impossible until we’ve nearly landed on Athens. My father wants to know if I live as soon as possible, and surveying the color of the ship’s vapor trail will do that.” He leans over, picks up my bag of belongings. “Is this everything?”

“Yes,” I say. There is little I want to take with me. Clothing, a tablet that has all my favorite stories and pictures of my family, a toy Daedalus made for me, some jewelry of my mother’s.

Theseus hesitates a moment. Then he shrugs. “Come inside,” he says, and I follow him up the ramp.

The ramp rises and shuts behind me. I look around, surprised that my brother is not here to greet me. “Asterion!” I call, ignoring the welcoming smiles the tributes and the ambassador give me. I turn hopefully at the sound of footsteps, but it is only Periboea approaching.

“If we are leaving, surely Asterion can reveal himself,” I say.

The floor rumbles beneath my feet. A second later I sway, caught off-guard by the suddenness of the departure. Surely the engines should have taken longer to warm up. When I regain my footing, I look up to see a puzzled look on Periboea’s face.

“Asterion?” she says, her gaze flickering between me and Theseus. “The name is unfamiliar to me.”

“Asterion is my brother,” I explain. “He’s accompanying us.”

“No one else came aboard,” she says. Her expression is troubled.

For a moment, the words don’t make sense. Then I whirl to glare at Theseus. “You promised me and my brother safe passage if we helped you! You left him in the maze?”

Theseus’s expression is remote. His cool words slide like a knife between my ribs. “You had to realize I could never allow a monster aboard my ship. He was a man-eater.”

“But--”

“I killed the Minotaur.”

Someone is screaming, as loud and as furious a roar as ever escaped Asterion’s throat. It takes me a moment to realize the screams are mine, and an even longer moment to realize that I have borne Theseus to the floor, my hands tight around his throat.

His hands flutter uncertainly in the air, fingers curled instinctively to gouge out my eyes but never going near my face. He wears a strange look, half-shocked, half-incredulous, as though he never considered I might love my brother.

“Ariadne!” The girl’s voice does not belong to Xenodice or Phaedra, but the desperate edge reminds me of my sisters when they talked Asterion down from one of his rages. I listen. “Ariadne, release him,” Periboea says again. “If you kill him, the captain will kill you, and then Minos will seek revenge. Do you want another war?”

The laugh that escapes my lips is harsh and ugly. Theseus’s face turns redder, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes as I snarl, “My father went to war over Androgeus’s murder. Shall I not do the same for Asterion?”

Someone grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks. My hands loosen in surprise, and Theseus rolls out of my reach. I lunge for him, ignoring the pain in my scalp, but he is already gone, guards moving to stand between us.  

“Ariadne,” Periboea says gently. She kneels next to me, her grip still tight on my hair. Pity darkens her eyes, deepens the creases around her mouth. “I am sorry for your loss, but there has been enough war.”

“Athens robbed me of two brothers,” I say. Another scream bubbles up from my throat, but when it escapes, it comes out as a moan of despair. I think of Xenodice and Glaucus and their stricken expressions, of Phaedra’s tears, of Theseus’s bloodstained hands and triumphant smile.

“Asterion,” I moan. Did he call out for aid when Theseus killed him? Did he wail for me, for Xenodice, for Mother? “Asterion.” Periobea’s hand drops from my hair to my shoulder, but I curl in on myself. I huddle over the spot where Theseus’s words stabbed me, where it feels as though my heart’s blood is spilling from my chest. “Asterion.”

I wail his name until I have no voice left.  

 

* * *

 

_Theseus must die, whether it is by my hand or by one of my kin. Periboea might wish for peace, but I am my father’s daughter. I shall have vengeance for Asterion._

-Fragment 14 recovered from the memory banks of the spacecraft  _Semele_

* * *

The ship is scheduled to refuel at Naxos, a small space station about halfway between Crete and Athens. However I avenge Asterion, I shall have to accomplish it before then.

I wish, as I crawl among the engine wiring and listen for approaching footsteps, that I paid attention to Deucalion when he explained the design of the _Argo_. Perhaps then I could more easily cause this ship’s destruction. The wires cut deeply into my fingers, drawing blood, but I ignore the pain.

“Ariadne.”

Somehow, it does not surprise me that it is Periboea who discovers me, that even on metal floors her footsteps are soundless. Her voice is soft and unsteady with horror.

“Ariadne,” she whispers again. She presses her hand upon my wrist. For a moment I think she means to try and reason with me once more, then I feel the prick of a needle and numbness spreads up my arm.

“What….” My thoughts slow, turn sluggish. I blink heavy eyelids. “Peri….” My lips feel swollen and I cannot properly shape her name with my mouth.

“You are mad with grief,” Periboea whispers, fingers still tight around my wrist. “If they discover what you just tried to do, they will kill you.”

Despite the numbness, I smile at the thought of Theseus’s expression.

Periboea swears. “Athenian, Cretan, you are all mad,” she says, and then her fingernails dig into my skin as she drags me away from the engines. She half-carries, half-drags me through the corridors, explaining my condition away with a quiet, “Exhausted from grief, I think,” to anyone who asks.

I should be angry at her for thwarting my revenge, I know, but I cannot muster the emotion. Everything seems distant, my vision narrowing to pinpricks. I will be furious later, I think drowsily.

She lowers me onto a seat, smoothes my hair away from my face. “Ariadne,” she says. I struggle to keep my eyes open, but her face wavers and blurs. “I have set the escape pod's distress beacon to send out a call after five hours, once we are out of range. If you have any sense, you will not try to follow us.”

If I had any sense, I think, I would have looked past Theseus’s looks and seen his callousness. I close my eyes, weary beyond belief.

Perhaps Periboea kisses my forehead. Perhaps she simply sighs and steps away to the door of the escape pod. I cannot feel anything at all as I slump forward and welcome the darkness. 

 

* * *

 

When I awaken, I do so slowly, my head pounding. Someone holds my hands, turning them so that my palms face upwards. Presumably this is to study my damaged fingertips, which sting in a vague sort of way.

I breathe in unsterilized air and realize I am no longer in the escape pod. My stomach roils and I keep my eyes shut for a moment, hoping that I do not vomit on whoever’s taken me from the escape pod.

“That looks painful,” a stranger murmurs as gentle fingers probe at my cuts. His voice is warm with concern and accented with an alien lilt. No Cretan or Athenian, the owner of this voice. “Mother, do we have any skin and muscle repairing nanites in the infirmary?”

“Yes,” a woman answers, but there is something about her monotonous voice that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. A spike of adrenaline banishes the last of the sedative from my system.  

I force my eyes open and immediately wish I didn’t.

I’d been a fool before to think that Periboea had been genetically enhanced. She is exceedingly beautiful, but naturally so. The young man who kneels before me is so beautiful that it’s painful. My eyes sting at the sight of his perfectly symmetrical features, the impossible purplish-blue of his eyes. I spot the tell-tale glitter of madness in his gaze and my breath catches in my throat.

“You’re a god,” I breathe through still-numb lips, the words only slightly slurred.

I do not know who first called enhanced humans gods, but someone did once upon a time and the name stuck. The gods are powerful and unpredictable, their life-spans extending usually twenty years more than most humans, but mental instability goes hand in hand with their terrible beauty and power.  

“No,” the man says with a sardonic quirk of his lips that suggests he makes this correction often. “My father is. My mother’s human.” He looks up, his smile softening. “Aren’t you, Mother?”  

“Yes,” a woman answers, and now I realize why her voice unsettles me. The woman’s voice comes from all around me, as though she is talking through a speaker.

The man catches me staring. His smile turns crooked. “I’m being rude. My name is Dionysus.”

“Ariadne,” I say automatically.

“Ariadne,” he repeats, and the way he says my name makes me flush and jerk my hands away from his. He doesn’t look offended. “Ariadne, this is my mother, Semele. Mother, this is Ariadne.”

“Hello, Ariadne,” the woman says pleasantly as Dionysus gestures into the empty air.

“Well. Let me go get the nanites,” Dionysus says, getting to his feet. He has laid me out on a bed, presumably his, for the room is small and cluttered with personal items. I spot my bag of belongings at the foot of the bed. 

Once he is gone, I sit up and blink at my surroundings. “Um, I am sorry, Semele, but where are you?” I say at last.

“If I am anywhere, I am situated in the ship’s memory banks. I am the ship’s artificial intelligence, based on the personality and memories of Dionysus’s deceased mother. He persists in the delusion that I am in fact his mother rather than an electronic copy,” the disembodied voice explains. There is a moment’s pause. “I do not advise trying to disabuse him of the delusion. His cousin Pentheus attempted it a year ago.”

“What happened to Pentheus?” I ask, suspecting I already know the answer.

I do not think it possible for an A.I.’s voice to turn cold, but this one’s does. “He is deceased.”

Dionysus returns, bearing a medical supply box. The nanites quickly go to work on my fingertips, stitching together skin and speeding along the healing process. My fingers tingle and itch. I am almost grateful for the distraction when Dionysus asks, “So how did you come to be in an escape pod with injured hands?”

For a moment I struggle to come up with a feasible lie, then I shrug. “I was trying to sabotage a ship,” I say.

Dionysus’s mouth twitches, though I cannot tell whether he is fighting a smile or a frown. I find that I cannot bring myself to care. At least my eyes have adjusted somewhat to his unnatural beauty. “Did you succeed?” he asks.

“No.”

“I am sorry,” he says, actually sounding as though he means it.

I find myself laughing, the sound edged with hysteria for a moment before it smoothes out into something more genuine. “So am I,” I say. I look towards the window where the stars seem smeared across the glass. “Where are we going?”

Dionysus’s reflection shrugs. “Nowhere in particular,” he says. “Did you have a preference?”

“Not Crete or Athens,” I say. I cannot face my family, and I would be arrested as soon as I set foot on Athenian soil. I frown. “You can drop me off at Naxos. I have no money--”

“Mother likes you,” Dionysus says, as though that means something. Perhaps to him it does. He smiles at me, and it’s a half-wild, half-earnest look. “You can stay on board as long as you like.” He pauses. “I could teach you how to properly sabotage a ship.”

Despite everything, my lips twitch into a weak smile. “I think I would like that.”

Dionysus stuns me with his delighted grin that somehow intensifies his looks even more, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “Wonderful! Mother, set the ship on autopilot. I’m going to show Ariadne how to make the engines blow up.”

“Have fun, dear,” the A.I. says. “Welcome aboard, Ariadne.”

“Thank you, Semele,” I say, and let Dionysus lead the way. 


End file.
